


But I Can't Hear Knocking Anymore

by mcpriceley



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: M/M, i wrote this at 3 in the morning in philadelphia so u know its shit, my professor told me to apply to the inquirer, read this and then look me in the eyes and tell me that again, um
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 09:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12627885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcpriceley/pseuds/mcpriceley
Summary: Nobody was there.And yet, everyone was there.Everyone wanted to watch as Michael drowned himself in his own sorrow, because Michael couldn’t even fucking decide if he was alone or if he was surrounded by pitchforks with loud mouths.And what was that goddamn sound?





	But I Can't Hear Knocking Anymore

He’s there. He’s there, he’s in the bathroom at some party for some popular kid, and it’s Halloween, and his best friend just…

He’s _there._ Michael looks at himself. Because he’s really—he’s in the bathroom at Jake’s house, and his stupid fucking monster costume is glaring back at him from the tub, and there’s _nobody else there with him._

He stares at himself through the mirror, as if his eyes could form a portal or something right out of there. They don’t, and a whole minute later it’s _still_ just him in this goddamn wasteland. It’s him, and everything he knew just outside of the door. It’s Michael, and the rest of the world.

Holy _shit._

With every realization, he feels himself moving yards away from his actual self.

Michael Mell, the antisocial headphones kid with a weird obsession with shit before his time, and only one friend who definitely cared more about the rest of the world than he did Michael. Because that was just it, wasn’t it? Michael was here because he didn’t exist in the real world. Michael perpetuated that himself, he made sure that he was a separate species, a _freak,_ and, as of tonight, officially, a _loser._ That’s right, Michael didn’t make the rules anymore. Jeremy did. And according to Jeremy’s handbook, Michael deserved to be sitting in the spot that he was in, because he was a fucking loser with no friends and a bad itch to ruin things.

His jaw slacked with pain as his eyes welled up. Oh, shit, not this, too.

He had no friends. Not only that, he had nobody interested in even looking at him for five seconds, let alone speak to him.

Or was it the other way around? He didn’t know when his breathing had become so quick and so hoarse, but he knew it was distracting enough for him not to know anymore. And it made him think—if he walked out of there right now, not _even_ to give Jeremy a piece of his mind, he would see monsters. He would be surrounded by demons, whispering, watching, waiting and calculating his every move, turning Michael into something he didn’t recognize anymore. That’s what they did best, they manipulated Michael into something he didn’t even see himself as. Maybe that’s what Jeremy was getting at. He was trying to tell Michael that every ounce of bullshit he’s ever endured was based on _truth._

His hands registered the cold, as his mind ran through the mechanism of every inch of his situation. He was touching the sink. That was part of it. He wasn’t looking at himself anymore, and for some goddamn reason he then decided to—

_Fuck._

His eyes were bright red, his throat was so tight he would have thought he was choking. Maybe he was choking.

And then, he was moving. Trembling, perhaps. He could feel his hands shaking even with the pressure of solid ground beneath them, and he could feel that it was suddenly very difficult to stand up, and he relieved this pressure by shifting from foot to foot.

The movement… the movement allowed him to feel the earth.

He was _there._

Really, truly—pathetic old Michael Mell, sitting in the fucking _bathroom_ while everyone else went out and had a good time. Because everyone there was wanted except him. The one person he could always count on also never being wanted was even being whisked away, and now Michael was the only one who failed to make it out of his own personal hell.

He felt warmth dropping onto his hands, and as he zeroed back in on reality he became all too aware at once.

He took all the pressure on his shoulders—he was crying, he angrily wiped his eyes underneath his glasses, and even shook enough to just toss them into the sink almost carelessly. He felt weak, as though he hadn’t eaten in days, but then as he thought back to all the _liquor_ he’d helped himself to, he wished he hadn’t. He felt sick, and like there was a wave pool rising in his blood, and absolutely no way to stop it. Michael was about to drown.

Nobody was there.

And yet, everyone was there.

Everyone wanted to watch as Michael drowned himself in his own sorrow, because Michael couldn’t even fucking decide if he was alone or if he was surrounded by pitchforks with loud mouths.

And what was that goddamn s _ound?_

He paused his dry-heaving for a moment to listen in, eyes wide with panic.

Someone wanted to come _in._

It wasn’t—he wasn’t just afraid of the outside world anymore. The outside world wanted to come in and make him suffer in there, they wanted to strip away the safe ground Michael had created for the moment. He couldn’t take it. He was fucked no matter what he did, and he felt the water rising up to his chin, and he could only keep his head above water for so long.

He almost didn’t get the words out.

“I’ll be out soon.”

He heard rumbling, or it could have been his imagination-- but what he heard wasn’t _good,_ either way, and his face crumbled into an intense bout of ugly crying. His hands tangled in his hair, running over his face and pressing into his eye sockets as if that would fucking help.

He was trapped, he was trapped, he was trapped, and even when he left, he would _still_ be trapped. There was no escaping this. He wasn’t dropping out of high school, and even if he did and never had to see these people ever again, he would still have to live with the fact that _this is who he was._

Jeremy knew him better than anyone on the planet. In a lot of ways Michael hadn’t admitted before this moment, Jeremy knew him better than he knew himself. Jeremy called him a loser. Jeremy wanted nothing to do with him. Jeremy didn’t think Michael was worth very much.

And, hell, if Jeremy knew better than he did, who was Michael to argue the opposite?

_And why doesn’t this bathroom have any fucking windows?_

He needed to _breathe._ He was suffocating—

And the noises didn’t stop. They only grew louder, and louder, and Michael could feel his lungs closing and his mind caused downright painful feelings to erupt in his chest, and more than anything, he never wanted to feel like this ever again, he never wanted to feel this ever in his life, he felt like there was no way out, and—

He turned on the faucet. He shakily cupped ice cold water in his hands, and threw it on his face.

…That feeling… surprisingly muted the ache in his chest for a few moments. Fighting fire with fire probably wasn’t the healthiest coping mechanism, but for now, it made him feel like he could at least _survive this._

He was coming down from the loss of breath. He was catching it, albeit in the slowest fashion possible, but that was progress compared to what a goddamn dying mess he’d been before.

He slowly grabbed his wet glasses and walked over to the door. And just as his fingers brushed the handle, he felt a spike of anxiety rush through him.

When the banging stopped, the world stopped.

Michael was saved for just a few moments more.

Or, rather, he’d sort of wished he could just fucking have an excuse to get out of there, because every second more that he spent feeling like the walls were closing in was just torture.

God, he wished he’d never been so s _tupid._

It didn’t matter that Jeremy used to be his knight in shining armor. If he was ignoring him, flat out pretending that he couldn’t even see Michael, for weeks, he should have taken the hint that it was going to end this way. Michael was only Jeremy’s safety net when Jeremy would rather have one friend than none at all. What authority did he think he had for coming to this party to try and talk to him again?

He was back at the mirror, and, _God,_ he wished he hadn’t looked at himself.

He’d managed to spend that time in his head, but he… suddenly couldn’t. Michael wasn’t living in his head, anymore, he thrust himself into _their_ world and _their territory,_ and he felt every bit like he couldn’t survive this because he probably couldn’t. He had no way out. Ever. This defined him. _Jeremy_ defined him.

He had never heard himself make a choked sob quite like the one that escaped his mouth in that moment. It was quite obvious that it was a new low for him when he pitied himself.

What if Michael just never existed in the first place?

What if Jeremy had the ability to get popular years back, without wasting all of his time with someone he secretly hated getting stoned in his basement purely because he had nothing better to fucking do? Because _Michael_ screwed it up for him. Jeremy was never the loser, really, he was brought down by the loser before him, crying like a fucking baby into the bathroom mirror of the biggest Halloween party of the entire fucking year. _This_ was Michael’s hot night out on the town. Wishing he was home getting stoned in his basement.

Wishing he had a friend.

He was a loser. Holy shit, he was a loser, he couldn’t run from it. It scared the living shit out of him, having to be what he and Jeremy had always just rolled their eyes at, but he had to be it, didn’t he? Because everyone thought that they knew him. Michael couldn’t convince them he was any different if nobody wanted to know him, so his only option was to be whatever they said he was.

He kicked the bathroom cabinet. Hard. It had the same effect that the water had on his face—a momentary distraction. He couldn’t take this anymore. He stomped over to the door, ripped it open, and hurriedly wobbled his way out.

He could have sworn that he saw Jeremy’s face peeking from the crowd once he found his way downstairs, eyes trained on the floor, and something akin to confusion and concern crossing his expression when he saw the state Michael was in, but Michael didn’t stop his prowl until he found the exit.

Yeah, okay, concern? From Jeremy Heere? Who was he, suddenly, Mother Therese?

Michael crossed his arms over his chest and reveled in the cold winds that followed him on his way home.

Michael felt the sneers and voices follow him the whole way, though he desperately wished that would blow away with the wind, too.


End file.
